The Great Believers

by Rebecca Makkai

Book Overview

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018
LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER
ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER
THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER

Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler

"A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it's like to live during times of crisis." --The New York Times Book Review

A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris

In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico's funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico's little sister.

Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster.

Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, Buzzfeed, The Seattle Times, Bustle, Newsday, AM New York, BookPage, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Lit Hub, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0735223521
• ISBN13: 9780735223523
• Release Date: June 2018
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Stunning. A must.

This is easily one of the best books of many set during the early years of the AIDS pandemic--it is fully alive, which makes the tragic, criminal waste of that period that much more devastating. You're amused, moved and angered often within the space of a page. The friends, lovers and colleagues who populate the story--which jumps back and forth in time between the early '80s (moving into the '90s) and 2016--feel familiar, as if from your own circle. Some of Makkai's nuanced observations on the inner lives of her people, especially leading character Yale, are revelatory; she hits on several of the particular and private pains acquired by many gay men who came of age being made to feel like imposters, at best, in a world that shunned them. It is, obviously, not an uplifting story but it is filled with love and in no way a chore. A beautiful, engaging, heartbreaking read that I cherished.